Solitary Continued
by JackSparrowsBooty
Summary: A continuance of the episode 'Solitary' in which Elliot gets pushed off a roof by a suspected perp. I wanted Olivia to be part of his rescue, so I just wrote a fic that included a scene like that! Please let me know if it's any good. Rated T for adult language, violence.


**Solitary Continued**

I really like the episode 'Solitary', but I felt like Olivia should have been more involved in assisting Elliot when he was pushed off the roof. I'm not entirely sure if the dialogue is the same, so give me a little leeway regarding details. :)

* * *

If Elliot knows anything about his long established career with the NYPD, it's that he never wants to see another person locked up for a crime he or she did not commit. He knows the likelihood is that he has put many individuals away for rape or murder on shaky evidence because his gut told him that the perp was guilty. At this point, however, he has come to doubt his intuition. He'd felt certain that Lily was an honest and innocent victim, but that has proven to be a slippery slope. Turns out this girl is a phony, just wanted the attention. He feels like a tool, knows that Callum Donovan does as well. An apology is the only way Elliot can feel better about the situation. That's why he does not understand why he is plunging over the edge of the rooftop on Grand Avenue, plummeting downward.

He feels his body slice through the crisp air and his only thought is on his children, all five of them, his wife, and his partner. In an instant he imagines Maureen marrying without a father to guide her down a church aisle, Kathleen graduating college, looking out to an audience without her father's presence, Dickie and Lizzie finishing high school without his guidance, and Eli growing up only knowing his dad in pictures and stories. Kathy, dressed in black, peering downward at his coffin. Olivia, standing by her side in full-uniform, his colleagues surrounding them. A black shroud.

He feels his body make contact with something hard beneath him, pain shoots up from the base of his spine, and stars burst into his vision after his head cracks against pavement.

Sharp, searing pain. Then there is nothing but black.

* * *

Olivia taps her fingers against her knee as she glances out the car window to the front of Donovan's building and sighs impatiently, pushing her hand through the fine hair at the front of her head. Elliot has been in the apartment for a good fifteen minutes already and she knows he wants to make his sincerity be known to the convicted offender, but does the process really need to be this lengthy?

She is painfully aware of his need to serve justice the right way. The flaws in the justice system have been exposed recently, and she remembers how deflated he'd been after realizing he had helped put an innocent man in prison for life. The cynicism increased after finding out that Sonya Paxton was incapable of helping the poor man be released. No hope for justice then, but Elliot is determined to ask forgiveness.

She remembers the look on his face after speaking with the victim. Elliot practically raced out of the hospital and she had to run to keep up with him. He insisted on going alone, but she had placed a calming hand on his arm. Let me go with, she stated, making sure to catch his eyes with her own. He had only nodded.

Olivia is ripped from her thoughts when her portable erupts noisily from the center console of the car. In nearly inaudible words, a dispatcher requests the assistance of all available units. Report of child sex abuse, a fresh domestic call. These are the least favorite cases to respond to because they involve robbed innocence and the sickest kind of perversion. She tilts her head back so that it falls against the head rest, grumbling softly. It never ends.

She presses the button on the side of her portable. "Elliot," she says shortly, and waits a few seconds before clicking it again. "Elliot, we got a call."

Olivia pauses to listen for his answer, and frowns slightly when he doesn't. He must be having quite the heart to heart with Donovan, she thinks, but a creeping feeling begins to rise into her gut. What if..? She hasn't heard a gunshot, no one running, no frantic screaming. These are all good things. So why does she have this sinking sensation that he is not all right?

She tries again. "Elliot, wrap it up. We have a call."

Her pocket vibrates and she pulls her cell phone out of her jacket, letting a small bit of relief surface, but she notices that the call is from her Captain. She flips it open and presses the phone to her ear. "Yeah."

"Olivia, where are you?" he retorts, sounding stressed. "You and your partner are needed at the scene. Why is Elliot not responding to his phone?"

Her middle flutters with anxiety. "I'm not sure, Captain. I've been trying to reach him over the radio."

"Well," Cragen responds, "locate him and get the hell over here."

"Yes, sir," she says, then shuts the device. She closes her eyes briefly, then opens the passenger door and heaves her body out of the vehicle. She enters the apartment building, making an instant beeline to Donovan's place. The elevator looks dirty and unreliable, so she uses the stairs, noting that they look just as filthy and smell like old piss.

Donovan's door is closed, the inside is dark and silent. She knocks anyway. "Elliot?" she asks. "Elliot, are you in there?"

The silence is deafening. And makes her ill with worry. She bangs on the thinly-paneled wood with her palm. "Elliot!" Olivia musters all of her feminine strength and kicks at the door, a feeling of satisfaction washing over her when the wood breaks at the edges and gives way into the dark room before her. She draws her weapon out in front of her and creeps in slowly, clearing her position by swinging her gun left and right, keeping her periphery on heightened alert in case of an attack to her blind spots. She does this in all five rooms of Donovan's apartment and finally clears the entire place, and she lowers her weapon.

A loud bang of a door startles her and the gun is back up, and she slips through the place to locate the noise. Voices are erupting in the hallway, sounding shocked and angry.

"The hell is this?" a man shouts.

A woman responds in an aged, scratchy voice. "It looks like the door's been kicked in. Someone call the police."

Olivia emerges from the doorway and flashes her badge while putting her gun away. "I'm Detective Benson from the NYPD." The two eye her identification warily. "Have either of you seen a man in a suit in here, about six feet tall, short brown hair?" The tenants shake their heads simultaneously. "Do you know the man that lives in this apartment?" she indicates the busted in door with a waving hand.

"Yeah, I've met him," says the man, shrugging slightly. "He's kinda weird, though. Always keeps to himself. His name is, uh, Donovan I think."

Olivia nods. "You seen him recently?"

The man frowns in thought. "I ain't seen him in a while. I been inside since I got home from work, about three hours ago."

She begins to feel a sick kind of hopeless. "How long ago was it when you last saw him?"

"It was about, I dunno, a few days ago. I went up to the roof for some fresh air and he was hanging out up there by himself."

A light bulb goes off in her head suddenly. "Do you know if he goes to the roof often?"

The man nods as he lifts his shoulders. "Yeah, he says he likes bein' up there at night because he likes like lights."

Olivia thanks the two tenants and makes a mad scramble toward the stairwell, ascending the steps and shoving her way through the door to reveal the rooftop of the apartment building. She places her hand on her gun and sweeps her gaze around, seeing only the dark rooftop and the twinkling lights of the surrounding city. Olivia's sense of hearing is keenly aware of any noise around her, but all she can make out is the distant sound of sirens, car horns.

A few seconds later she takes her hand away from her hip. Where the hell could he be? A noise splits the Manhattan air, louder than the shrinking sound of the police car in the distance. A disembodied, muffled voice that is barely perceptible erupts to her right. She recognizes this instantly as Elliot's radio.

"Elliot? You there?" she asks, edging to her right cautiously. Anxiety and adrenaline clash in her gut, and her heart skips a few beats, sputters, then starts again.

She follows the garbled noise and sounds of static until she is almost to the edge of the roof top. She swallows away the bile that is creeping up from her throat, then peers over.

Olivia gasps.

Elliot.

His body is motionless. 15 feet straight down.

"Oh, my God. Elliot!"

* * *

It's amazing what the human body can endure throughout its lifespan without succumbing to illness or injury. Elliot knows he is not dead because his body is one large throbbing and painful unit. His head feels like it's cracked open in the back, his chest burns from lack of oxygen, his shoulder feels like it's been torn from the socket and his lower back and tailbone feel like they have been shoved about two feet in an upward direction. He is delirious and barely conscious, but when he is finally able to suck air into his deflated lungs, he lets out an involuntary moan of discomfort.

He hasn't opened his eyes yet, but he's glad for that. The world is spinning despite the fact that he's lying in a prone position, muscles rigid. Nausea sweeps up from his stomach, but he's too weak to move in order to lessen it. He swears he hears something in the distance, like somebody's voice, but the noise sounds too indistinct for him to understand it.

He's so out of his head, he doesn't realize that the noise is coming from his partner. He opens his eyes and makes out a face hovering over his, hot breath washing over his face. A warm hand lands on his forehead, Olivia shouts as she turns away. He tries to ask her what is going on, but he just makes another agonized groan. His ears stop ringing long enough for him to hear his partner's voice clearly.

"…Grand. Officer down, we need a bus forthwith! I repeat officer down!"

Olivia.

Elliot ignores his condition and notices that she looks terrified. For a moment he is tempted to grab her by the face and tell her he will be fine. She glances down at him and relief relaxes her expression slightly. His vision starts to spin and the edges of his sight start to blacken. No, he thinks to himself. Stay awake. His eyelids droop and he makes an angry sound in the back of his throat.

"El? Wake up, come on. You need to look at me." She slides her soft, warm hand down his cheek and he forces himself to meet her gaze. "Good," she says, eyes bright with tears. "Medics are on the way, okay? I know you want to move, but don't. I couldn't live with myself if you have a preventable spinal injury, you know?" She pets the crown of his head.

He is breathing shallowly, but he manages a soft, "Liv…"

She lets out a strangled half-sob. "I know, El, I know! Don't worry, they'll be here soon." Olivia sounds hysterical, which is so _unlike _herself.

The reverberations of heavy footfalls announce the arrival of medics and law enforcement. Suddenly there are half a dozen faces above him that blur together, and darkness engulfs him once again when his vision spins out of control.

* * *

Olivia is still determined to remain at Elliot's side despite the fact that the EMTs have urged her to move out of the way so they can do their work. Her partner has fallen unconscious again, and she is left with the worst kind of dread. A medic wraps a brace around his neck carefully and he is even more gently lifted by several pairs of hands and placed on a backboard. His clothing is cut away from his body and destroyed, exposing Elliot's bare chest. Olivia watches for the rise and fall of breath, but he doesn't seem to be moving at all.

"He's not breathing!" she yells. "You need to make him breathe! Goddamnit!" She'll perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation if she must. She feels hands pull her away from her partner and she struggles against them.

"Ma'am," a woman says sternly. "We need you to move out of the way. Let the paramedics do their job."

"He's my partner!" she exclaims. She is wrapped in a hug by a stranger, but she falls into it, needing reassurance. "He can't die. He's my partner."

"I know, hon'. We will do everything in our power to make sure he stays alive. We just need you to give us some room to work. Okay?"

The stranger guides the hesitant Olivia back about three feet, but her eyes never leave the man lying prostrate on the orange polyethylene board. She watches the medics call for a life flight. A kid who couldn't be older than twenty-five shouts into his portable that they need the nearest level one trauma center. The EMTs wrap an oxygen mask around Elliot's mouth, start an intravenous line, tape sensors to his chest. Olivia feels as though her world is collapsing, and indeed her knees buckle. The woman holding her manages to catch her, but Olivia could care less about cordiality at the moment.

A mouth comes near her ear. "They're taking him to Bellevue. You want me to take you?"

Olivia mumbles a 'yes,' as the EMTs prepare Elliot for flight. Several minutes later the tremendous thumping of a helicopter's rotors are splitting the air, and the wind picks up dramatically. The woman guides Olivia off of the roof through the door at the exit. All she can do is shudder.

* * *

Olivia doesn't even remember what transpired in the last hour. All she knows is that she is standing in the crowded emergency waiting room of Bellevue Medical Center, wearing a path into the floor in front of the double doors which separate the sick and worried masses from the seriously injured and ill. She can only speculate on how Elliot's condition is, because she has not heard one _fucking _word on whether or not he will be okay.

She spoke with Cragen fifteen minutes ago, at least she _thinks _she did, but he hasn't walked through the doors. Munch is sitting a few feet away, elbow to the arm of the faux wooden chair he is sitting in, chin resting in his palm. His shaded gaze watches her closely. Munch's partner is outside talking on his cell phone to whomever.

Olivia wrings her hands apprehensively, willing herself not to think about the way Elliot sounded as he groaned, the pained look on his face. She finally loses her nerve and marches up to the nurse's station, eyes a-lit in aggravation. The nurse looks hardly startled. She really has no right to be surprised by frustrated or crazy people. It _is _New York anyway.

"What can I do for you?" the nurse asks calmly.

Olivia retorts a bit gruffly. "My partner. I need to know if he is okay."

"The cop?"

The word rubs her the wrong way. It sounds derogatory and immediately bristles her. "Detective Stabler."

The nurse smiles stiffly. "Hold on one moment, and I'll go find out." The younger woman stands, casts one last uncertain look at Olivia and disappears out of a door that leads to the general emergency area. She imagines what the doctors and nurses would do if she leaps over the nurse's desk and begins searching trauma rooms, but her body is numb from shock. She's surprised she'd been able to walk at all.

Olivia checks her watch after standing at the desk for what seems an eternity, when she feels a hand at her elbow. She swivels defensively, then balks at ADA Paxton's presence. The woman looks like a combination of worry and exasperation, and the emotion is what throws Olivia. Paxton is cold as ice on any normal occasion. Of course, she seems to light up every time Elliot walks by, which she has noticed with derision. Not that Olivia has any right to be jealous, since he is married, but she has always felt herself stiffen whenever a female gets a little _too close_ to her partner.

Sonya purses her lips, and the movement ages her about fifteen years. "How is he?"

Olivia's arms cross. "I have no idea. A nurse went back to check on him a while ago, but she's been gone for at least twenty minutes now." She shrugs, then narrows her eyes. "Any leads on Donovan?"

Paxton shakes her head. "Searched his apartment and sent some black and whites within a five mile radius. No one remembers seeing him flee the area. We've gotten a couple substantial leads, but so far nothing's turned up."

"That's not good enough," Olivia hisses, her eyes narrowing. How can this woman be satisfied with half-hearted work?

Paxton's eyebrows climb in defense. "Excuse me?"

Olivia notices her captain and Fin walking together towards the two and she feels physically reassured by their presence. She opens her mouth to speak, but can see their eyes fall on someone behind her. She turns to see the same nurse who she spoke to earlier. She tries to read her face, but the nurse obviously has taken courses in how to remain stoic when she beholds possibly life-altering news.

"All right," the nurse begins, hands clasped in front of her. "I spoke with Detective Stabler's doctors and was able to find out what's going on. First, I want everyone to know that he's stable, breathing on his own, and awake. In fact, he's asking when he is allowed to leave already." The four are joined by Munch, and all sigh collectively in relief. "However, we feel he needs to remain hospitalized for at least 48 hours due to the significance of some of his injuries."

Olivia's blood freezes. "What kind of injuries?"

"Well, he blacked out, so there is indication of a head injury. He's had a CT scan, but we're waiting on the results from the neurologist. He also dislocated his left shoulder and has broken his tail bone. He also initially complained of significant back pain. We were able to rule out a serious spinal cord injury, but he has been taken back to have an MRI done to find out the source of his pain. Doctors believe he may have ruptured a vertebra in the fall."

The air in the room is heavy with sympathy. Cragen's haggard face grimaces as he crosses his arms. Olivia glances his way and the two share a gaze briefly. "So, it'll be a while before I can see him?" She realizes afterward that she has made a personal request to visit with her partner and has ignored the fact that others may as well.

The nurse nods. "He shouldn't be more than ten or twenty minutes more. I'll come out and get you as soon as he is situated in his own room."

* * *

Hospital time has to have a completely different concept than regular time, because Olivia has been waiting for almost an hour to see Elliot after being told by the nurse that it'd be much less of a wait. This stirs up the same kind of fear, that uncertainty, that makes her believe he's worse off than she'd been told. She closes her eyes and sends out a prayer to anything listening to do her a favor for once and keep his heart beating, lungs breathing, and legs still mobile.

She opens her eyes and sees the nurse walking toward her with a smile. _Finally,_ she thinks, standing with unnatural quickness.

"You ready to visit Detective Stabler?" she asks, placing a gentle hand on her elbow. Olivia shies away slightly, but nods.

With her co-workers turning heads, she is led by the nurse through the room, into the double doors, through the maze of rooms, stations, wandering doctors and nurses, and occasional patients, to a closed door with the room number '8.' There is no window for Olivia to peek in so she will be able to prepare herself. She takes in a deep breath.

The nurse turns and faces the detective. "Just to let you know what to expect – Detective Stabler is in a neck brace, as well as a shoulder immobilizer. He's also been given pain medication, so he will be pretty out of it, probably asleep. Try not to jostle him because he is quite sore from the break to his tail bone and the ruptured disc in his back."

Olivia simply nods, eager for the door to open. She is finally led into the room and her partner is all at once before her after hours of waiting. He is awake – she can tell – and lying stiffly on the bed. He doesn't move as she advances toward him, but his eyes move with her as she approaches. Olivia hears the nurse leave, then smiles grimly down at him.

"Hey," she says quietly, fingers curling with the desire to touch him.

Elliot's lips raise only slightly, an obvious indicator that he is uncomfortable. "Hey," he whispers. He turns his hand over so that his palm is facing up, and Olivia instinctively places her hand in his. His face contorts momentarily, but he fights whatever emotion is surfacing. _It's just the drugs, _she thinks. _He's not in the normal state of mind._

She pulls a chair closer to his bed without letting go of him, then sits down, leaning toward him intimately. "You need anything?" she asks, as she notes how strange it is for his palm to be touching hers.

Elliot presses his lips together. "No," he says, his voice soft, almost strained. "I'm just glad you're here."

* * *

Just let me know if this is worth another chapter. I intended this to be a one-shot, but if people feel it needs to be continued, I'll give it a try.


End file.
